The ballroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference may be filled with big names and boisterous crowds, but it’s in the small breakout rooms where activists and leaders are plotting how to undo what the Obama administration has done.

Unbeknown to California officials, oil producers in Kern County have been disposing of chemical-laden wastewater in hundreds of unlined trenches in the ground without proper permits, according to an inventory that regional water officials completed this week.

Koda, the 10-year-old male polar bear at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium, emerges from a cubbyhole atop the 6,000-square-foot enclosure he shares with 14-year-old Kobe. He steps out to a nearby ledge, his head bobbing and swinging from side to side. He then backs into the cubbyhole, head still...

On a summer day in 1885, three Hawaiian princes surfed at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River on crudely constructed boards made from coastal redwoods, bringing the sport to the North American mainland.

Rajendra Pachauri, who supervised work on the two most detailed studies of climate change ever completed, stepped down as head of the United Nations panel studying the science after allegations he sexually harassed a colleague.

Greg Gordon

The Justice Department’s filing of a multi-billion-dollar fraud lawsuit against the Standard & Poor’s rating agency this week culminates a massive, multi-year federal investigation code-named “Alchemy,” but it’s only the start of a more public legal battle joined by at least 16 state attorneys general. | 02/05/13 18:53:28 By - By Michael Doyle, Greg Gordon and Kevin G. Hall

Trying to get ahead of a potentially explosive story, credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s announced Monday that the Justice Department had informed the company that it’s the subject of a civil lawsuit for the AAA ratings it gave to complex bonds in 2007 that later turned out to be junk. | 02/04/13 19:13:01 By - By Kevin G. Hall and Greg Gordon

Interstate 66, once envisioned as a cross-continent highway from the Potomac to the Pacific, ends in a pile of dirt just past a cloverleaf interchange north of Somerset, Ky., the hometown of U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers. | 02/03/13 00:00:00 By - By Curtis Tate and Greg Gordon

America’s highway system, once a symbol of freedom and mobility envied the world over, is crumbling physically and financially, the potentially disastrous consequence of a politically driven road-building binge. Many agree that the country needs to invest trillions of dollars in its infrastructure, yet there’s little consensus on how to finance it or what the most pressing needs are. | 02/03/13 00:00:00 By - By Curtis Tate and Greg Gordon

Business leaders in Myrtle Beach, S.C., tried every tactic they could to win $1.3 billion in funding for Interstate 73, a six-lane gateway to their seaside getaway. | 02/03/13 00:00:00 By - By Greg Gordon and Curtis Tate

A massive turnout, voting machine breakdowns and misinformation about voter eligibility requirements snarled balloting at many of the nation’s polling places Tuesday, forcing Americans determined to help decide the fiercely fought presidential race to wait as long as five hours to vote. | 11/06/12 23:38:02 By - By Greg Gordon and Tony Pugh

Meanwhile, in New Jersey and New York, damage from Hurricane Sandy sent election officials scrambling to create makeshift polling stations and to limit what could be long lines and confusion for hundreds of thousands of people. | 11/05/12 19:35:01 By - By Tony Pugh and Greg Gordon

As Election Day approaches, county clerks’ offices in 31 states are accepting tens of thousands of electronic absentee ballots from U.S. soldiers and overseas civilians, despite years of warnings from cyber experts that Internet voting is easy prey for hackers. | 11/04/12 11:31:50 By - By Greg Gordon

Mitt Romney’s former private equity firm used a half-dozen companies and partnerships in the tax havens of Luxembourg, Ireland and the Grand Caymans four years ago to channel $689 million in loans to a U.S. company that it co-owned. | 10/02/12 20:20:14 By - By Greg Gordon

A five-state coalition, warning that decades of damage inflicted by man and nature could take a $350 billion toll, called Wednesday on the White House and Congress to make an urgent commitment of massive, long-term aid to protect the battered Gulf Coast, its fragile ecosystem and its oil, seafood, shipping and tourism industries. | 09/12/12 19:07:01 By - By Greg Gordon

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan and his wife paid taxes at effective rates of 20 percent last year and 15.9 percent in 2010, according to returns released Friday. | 08/17/12 20:34:37 By - By David Lightman and Greg Gordon

In a year when a sputtering economy might be expected to give him the upper hand in the presidential race, Mitt Romney finds himself on the hot seat on income taxes, fighting perceptions over whether he’s paid enough and how much he’d tilt future rates to benefit the rich. | 08/17/12 20:27:00 By - By Greg Gordon

Exponential economic growth cannot continue into the decades and centuries ahead because of constraints on energy supplies, according to Tom Murphy, an associate physics professor at the University of California-San Diego. | 08/12/12 00:00:00 By - By Greg Gordon

To some experts, spikes in oil prices over the last several years have signaled an ominous turn that could make it nigh on impossible for any president to expand the sputtering U.S. economy as it has in the past. | 08/12/12 00:00:00 By - By Greg Gordon